This sort of marketing isn’t new, but Collective Bias appears to have built a vehicle by which it can quickly grow. I’m covering them so that you know they exist, in short. I’m not a fan of Collective Bias’ methods, but the company has a service that many will wish to employ. I don’t remember when my fruit smoothie fetish began, but I distinctly recall planning outings just so I could drive by the ice cream shop that served smoothies back in the late 90s. The connection isn’t hard to spot: Collective Bias is designed to help drive folks to physical stores, of which Walmart is the largest. Walmart is a fitting partner for the company, as Collective Bias is also based in Bentonville. In addition to the social influencer activation, we hosted an hour-long Twitter Party that served as a quick pulse of content to generate additional impressions for the brands and demos. The plan was to increase the sell-through rate on Walmart in-store demos, promote the products, and amplify advertising messages on existing media. Social Fabric® ice cream lovers created content, weaving the products into their own ice cream socials providing a constant buzz of conversation between the two demos. Bloggers increased awareness and traffic to the holiday demos with content shared on their blog and social networks. Participants were challenged to have their own ice cream social to coincide with the Walmart demos across the country from Memorial Day to Independence Day.

Our Solution: A total of 110 lifestyle bloggers were activated to create content around Nestlé ice cream and the in-store demos. The Challenge: Increase awareness and drive traffic to “The Walmart Ice Cream Social,” an in-store demonstration event focusing on Nestlé’s Dreyer’s, Edy’s and Drumstick ice cream at Walmart during Memorial Day weekend and Independence Day weekend. Let’s read an example of its activities from the company itself, dealing in this case with ice cream: If you feel slimy about the enterprise, don’t feel bad, it is based on a sort of functional deceit: paying someone to write about your product is never an utterly clean proposistion, unless every interaction is carefully documented as paid promotion. Its bloggers, the company claims, have an average reach of 40,000 apiece.

Collective bias